ten fourteen

in shells
of selves

i cup
these
neuroses

grains
of sand

pearlescing
in unsui
and

sweet
salt
water

ten thirteen

it’s a civilized
cave-in,
so
no
need to worry.

watch the commercial
munch
chips in denial.

denial tastes
like dr. pepper

& double-pattied
cheeseburgers.

hold the onion.

this kind of
life wasn’t meant

for strong flavors
or any

discomfiting
de-delirium.

build the bubble.
block out,

blunt

all the rough
edges.

ten twelve

life
at the point
of tears.

eyelid
cliffhanger;

latch on
to lashes,

or fall.

cottonstopped
on a
heave of
bosom,

or carpet
crash & 
trampled

underfoot.

ten eleven

i don’t need these
arms or this skin
& bone
anymore.

i need a
long stretch,
a dilution
of self

across all
the planes
and plateaus

transparent
transcendent
transience.

done with
bodybound
functionality

& the story arc
of this
dimension.

ten ten

a writer is a
one-man crowd

lives without

& within
series of
concentric
circles
concentric
cycles

all twisted up
in cyclones
of self
of selves

on shelves.

ten nine

speaking of stutters
they’re all in fingertips, an
excuse,

the anti-rhythm of patience,
of directions i’m moving in.

move for
movement’s sake;
move because stillness
is still stifling &

sometimes you have to
shake that creative
juice
loose

prep those fingertips
for a nimble
numb untie
of the

noose

knot

really a
noose but the
daytangle of
monotonous schedule
& all that

adult responsibility
three hundred dollar insurance
coverage, cobra
slithers away
with so much of my
money.

spits in the eye of
every escape plan
i just
can’t sir.
cancer.

so you gotta have it,
gotta keep plugging away
at the everyday

for pay
the grey

turns to
gray

& you
stay.

ten eight

a timid pen is good
at pulling a weak line
from an empty page.

better yet:
give me a bold tip,
and a confident
imperfection.

say it with passion
or don’t say it
even if it’s wrong
even if words stutter.

i’d rather be
heard shouting
than whispering
brilliance
at nothing.

ten seven

this is a boring postcard
from the locale i just visited
in my mind.

something i grabbed
to give you
to say hey
i was just here, just now

here’s a picture
like all the other pictures.
a hello, for hello’s sake.

a cheap thinking of you,

because the gift shop
was out of shot glasses,

and i’m keeping the t-shirt.

ten six

murder me whimsically

for the replay value.

if this is a death scene,
i’d prefer cult classic
b movie camp

over psychological
thriller and the

stuff of real nightmares.

ten five

those ages i wrote
so many
bottled-up feelings.

secret wishes for
secret crushes

locked in
indecipherable
metaphor &
unintentional
simile.

this age:
an entire autumn
unspoilt by
expressions
of affection or vacuums
of unexpressed
affection.

a very
october feeling.

i am:
cozy inside
grey cool corners
colors behind fogged glass
spicy, slightly
overripe
warm open earth
chilling at the edges

ready for harvest
and the blankets
of winter.

ten four

i watch
now-sick
summer’s green
slip away
for autumn’s
erubescence.
ruddy twilight
blushes under
a perfect
grey veil.

ten three

barometric
pressure, a tight
upper arm squeeze.

inside arm, not
the skingrab
you’d get used to.

feels like
that hard swallow
sensation,
when you gulp
too fast
a rock elbows
through your
esophagus.

but this

not in your throat:
it’s hard, sharp
unproductive wrench.

pain without
destination.

a hurt
without result,
eventual
accustomization.

it slips away:
absence
unrealized.

not bonespeak,
the whisper of marrow
to calcium,

but bonescream:
alien frequencies
of titanium where marrow
was, protesting
biological framework.

foreign decibels.

hard reverberation
repeating bruises
on soft walls.

ten two

one bud buried

deep

in a small canal
screams alive
scares silence away.

grabs anxiety
wraps it tight
in a packed crowd
in the dark

for a show
of transcendence.

unending growth:
the bloom & fade
of tirade,
serenade,

shuffle, repeat
and finally

sleep.

ten one

efficacy is a child
of the greed
of time
and the necessity
of accomplishment.

i don't know
what this means
other than
i had to get
something
down to get the
dreaded first line
out of the way
so that i could
actually write.

i have decided
and have decided
to stick with my
decision
to write

one poem
every day
for the month
of october.

bed is whispering
at me
and i am going
to have to hash
this out quick.

eleven-thirty is
early for me
but late for a day
full of listening
to idiots

screw over
the family, the
kids they
have. that i
wish i could
have.

they say if
we all threw
all our
problems into
a giant pile
for everyone
to see,

we'd scramble
to get ours
back again.

but i might
let mine tumble
into the dust clouds
and grab
for something
unfamiliar.

just to have it
different.

just to have
a new burden
to hold onto

and to learn.

dusty

oh, blog dear, i apologize. you fell down behind the desk a few months back, and while i intended to pick you up only moments after, i got busy, see. drawing projects, work, time with new friends, the urge to write smothered under so many little businesses.

now it is september. the little businesses are not any less than they were. but summer is so good at smothering all but one urge at a time. thank goodness for september. september wakes you up again, with the cool, crisp edges it puts on everything. including the edges of myself, and i see defined the hole in the middle of all of me, so very well defined, and the need to write becomes once again a singularly physical thing, like breathing, like being.

today on twitter i mentioned that i needed to move to some place where it was autumn all the time, so i would always feel that physical need to just write write write. well, where the physical need would turn into not just a need, but a compulsion. necessities are so easy to brush away when it's all a swelter and a sweat in long, dry, toasted months.

september tastes like blank notebooks, pens and possibility. and october tastes like poems. i can feel them, the fruit of them, ripening on all my inner branches. branches that look deceptively like blood vessels, or neurons. in a few weeks, they will drop willing, and i will suddenly have more than i know what to do with. bushels that i can't gather fast enough, before the ripening makes them too sweet. and they'll be jarred away on soulshelves, pulled out again in march where the bite of time and the tang of afterthought can only let the faintest hint of freshness through. not poems, but the afterimage of poems. the ghosts of poemnegatives, too old to turn into proper pictures.

but listen to me! lamenting the bottling of fruit that is still hanging pre-perfect on the soultree. inedible at the moment, but soon. soon.

back to our regular programming

grey today, the clouds outside make the air feel smothery, it's humid and not grossly hot, with a bit of a campfire twinge to it from all the burning up our state has been doing. pre-thunderstorms, i like. still like, despite the way the pressure change seems to twist my shoulder up in new ways. odd, the ways a favorite thing can stay a favorite thing, even if it hurts you.

i have been writing so much this week. can't sleeping and that inkrun itch in the ends of fingers that only makes it harder to sleep. i'm in a weird place, these days. ever since june abated all of my fate-resigned morosing, and hey, whoa! i don't have cancer, i feel like i've spent the month untying all the little nots i had done up so nicely. spent six months with a silent rule of no-new-attachments. not liking people. not caring anymore about little things, not caring about anything besides little things. the nots you can't put into words because you never laid them out anywhere but in your head and your hesitancy.

since i'm the kind of person who loves and heartbreaks with every step, i felt like i had straightjacketed all my most... me... bits, just to try and cope. oh, i pity and envy people who don't feel every little thing so keenly. empathy is a gift, and it's one that i have been squandering this year, in my unspoken allowance of selfishnesses. oh it amazes me the ways you react when you feel like you're staring down your own mortality. the stupid things that you do. i have spent the first half of this year counting my regrets. there were more, and less, than i expected, or remembered. and when you think of those things, it seems to be impossible for dreams to not be dyed in the colors of nostalgia and possibility. my subconscious, in only the cruel, merciful way that a subconscious can, gifted me more do-overs than i knew what to do with.

imagination is the greatest key to empathy. and, being the selfish clod that any human can be at times, i spent much time empathizing with all of my little parallel universes. and i can conclude that, honestly, i am glad to be in this one. experience has made me so very much me. some people say that we're here to learn from our mistakes. some people are wrong. we're here to learn from our experience. not all experience comes from mistakes. i keep thinking about that this week.

i have had two new max dreams this week. short and sweet, but i had them. they give me hope. hope is such a nice feeling. perhaps the best there is. and someday, sometime, when i am in the right mood for such very personal divulgences, and perhaps if you ask me nicely, i will explain max to you, and put him here, to be immortalized and kept behind the tiny little bars of all these insufficient words.

old notebooks

lockless and curfewed
i am crammed
back into my
twelve year-old self.

struggling, alive,
they exorcise my
adult, exhume my
childhood for
resurrection

or rebirth.

attempt again
to upbring me
properly
before the world.

even lab techs
know you can't
reuse
guinea pigs.

you don't
go back and make
them right,
just because

now

you know.

seeds you've
cooked won't ever

grow.






it's talk of numbers
again
all athmatic and how smart you are.
so good at lying,
now that you know yourself.

it's obvious, but only
momentarily.

absence of thought
is letting whatwhomhaveyou
take you wherewhatever.

you will find yourself

perpetually making
things more
difficult.

you'll smile a little
smile a
while, but

won't feel as though
you deserve it.

ten thousand angels
you will never know
are crying for you now.

ten thousand church bells
ring to save
your soul.

somewhere,
in the earth,
the clock is ticking
indifferently

and someone sighs.

persons pushing it against
people weighing on it
to slow down.

what's next isn't to
ask anymore.

time needs space.

i cue you to
move on to the next
in a

series of questions.

she writes
red

she's on

fire

she carves words
out of

veins

catch her this

dragon

come put
out these

flames

warm-ups, & i have been you

a myopic lens
so fair you see
sad you see

marvel the
mystery
whispery
wistfully

some things
are for what happens
when you just type
for the sake of typing

stringing words
along the lines of a page
just to see something
left behind
when you leave

just to leave these little
lines of me
a history

her story







& the shot
glitters in the ruby
concave
of an open chest
the filigree sparkle
like a flash
of life or little
tiny pieces of a life
tiny drops of days
that spread
out a long red
pool beneath
all the holes
in leftover heart
or what once was
heart but is heart
no longer







i have been you.

i have sat
with the loose ends
of my expectations
dangled in my hands

while all they were
tied to
drifted away,
the smoke
of nothing

& my very soul echoed
by the purple sobs
of twilight
down the wall behind

me & the moonface
as blank
as white
as my own.

i have been you.

i have buried
loose ends
in busy little
businesses.

i have tried
to tie them
footnoted in
music notes

superimposed the ghosts
of their open knots
on every rushing image
i would flash before my mind
or eye
or mind's eye
hunting just one to help
me remember how to forget

i have pulled
reflections
from my black book
like poems

& kissed them
as memories.
each a different feature.

so many he's as
brown eyes, warm voice,

strong hands,
deep laugh,
an inquisitive eyebrow,
those lovely shoulders,
that dark hair

that could never be
strung together well,
or long, enough to
fill the longing.

each one dropped
like pebbles
into darkwell depth
to bring the
reflection of my loss
up to me
until it overflowed
& was lost

i have been you.

i have had
cups of days emptied
& their contents replaced
with the deafening
white noise
of strawsucking
nothing
nothing
nothing,

i have been you.

i have been the cage
for a starving animal
that eats itself
behind the bars.

i have been you,

& i am not you,
anymore.

rivers and rivets

nile wide & sky
embracing
your parallel

banks of me brook
all ebbs & flows

fullness of running away
& a destiny
of downstreaming

at ends
open ocean
waits eager
for floods & filling

fuller, nowhere room
for me
but embrace so empty

i hurl headheels
in cartwheels of
meant-for-me

& steady rhythm.
moonflux tides.

it comes & goes

like a late night love
musters genuine
intentions &
flees before
sun can hit sheets

& gravity forgets me
so hard i
levitate,

shake those walls
at max capac.
until my bolts
are unscrewed &

nothing can hold
rods, chains
nuts & braces

together. surpassed
(finally) fixing &

all unpuzzled.

she's alright with me

A gasp for breath rips through his dry throat like a sharp tear of thick cotton  fabric. Heels drive deeper into the sides of a steed already frothing in a panicked sprint. Perhaps breakneck speed is called breakneck speed because there's no time to see the branches that can take your head off, let alone dodge them. Face pressing against the mane of his horse, eyes squint to keep out hair and sweat. Not the good, clean sweat of hard work he is so used to smelling, no. This is the acrid stink of fear leaching from every pore of the terrified animal that would throw him from its back in a moment if he weren't holding on for life itself, his grip on the reins nothing more than the paralysis of instinct, eking fear from every pore of his own. A plague of terror to infect whatever landing place they find, the putrescent infection of horror that so easily spreads from a lone rider bearing only bad news and worse at his heels...

i tried so hard to write tonight. to make myself buckle down and birth something from a different corner of my head, some proof that a story not my own is in there somewhere. it's hard to watch epic stories and then feel like writing anything other than an epic when you sit down to make something yourself. 

i want to look out my window and see something different down on the street. nights like this i want to slip out my window and go wander in the dark and the quiet. have the moonlight and the shadows all to myself, even in all of these lined streets of peopleful houses. nights like this i want to walk down to the lake and circle it aimlessly (without drowning in swamp muck, or coming back smelling like dead carp and old algae.) that's a beautiful image right there. instead of quiet moonlight, i've made you draw a nice picture in your head of old fishy smelling lake muck. i must be so talented. 

sometimes i worry so much about being a disappointment that i don't even want to try things. i like hiding in the dark and the moonlight and solitude. i'm such a nocturnal creature. i prefer the cold to the heat, in most cases. at least where the weather is concerned. i prefer a shadow to a bright light. it's easier to be elusive and immaterial in the smoke of uncertainty. 

ah well. not any more, see. i'm back to being alright with myself, and not caring what anyone else thinks. i spent a month resigning myself to no future, and now i've got a huge one wide open before me, so i'm running for it with both arms open. i might trip, faceplant, but at least i'll be doing something instead of nothing. at the very least i can get out, be a friend, make a friend. everyone can use more friends. 

had a nightmare about my ex last night. one of those terrible things because while the premise of it was nightmarish, parts of it were good, and that made it even worse. the feel of his hand heavy and real as i pulled him away from the people he was trying to talk to. the sound of his laugh as we talked, even if he was laughing at my frustration. his chest as i beat my fists against it begging him to leave. 

she is trapped inside a month of grey

and they take a little every day

she is a victim of her own responses

shackled to a heart that wants to settle

and then runs away

it's a sin to be fading endlessly

yeah, but she's alright with me

she is leaving on a walkaway

she is leaving me in disarray

in the absence of a place to be

she stands there looking back at me

hesitates, and then turns away

she'll change so suddenly, 

she's just like mercury

yeah, but she's alright with me

keep some sorrow in your hearts and minds

for the things that die before their time

for the restlessly abandoned homes

the tired and weary ramblers bones

and stay beside me where i lie

she's entwined in me

crazy as can be

yeah, but she's alright with me.

she's alright

she's alright with me...

mercury - counting crows 

sweets for the... slightly ocd

allow me an explanation. 

say i have 47 candies, 12 red, 14 green, 15 yellow and 6 blue. 

i would eat a yellow first to make green and yellow even; 

then i would eat 2 green and 2 yellow 

(alternating yellow-green-yellow-green 'cause i like green more than yellow) 

to make their numbers even with red. 

then i would eat yellow-red-green 6 times 

(unless the candies are smarties, 

in which case the order would be red-yellow-green) 

to even them out with blue, 

after which the order would be yellow-red-blue-green. 

if i'm sharing with a friend 

i pick out which ones they get to eat for them 

so they don't mess with my system.

pendulum slum

that rush when you're trying to get everything out while the stream of thought is there, that you don't even stop to punctuate except for a comma, because it's coming out your fingers the way it's rushing through your head in one frantic, huge run-on sentence. when the pictures in your head blur past at a speed that leaves you so terrified you're going to miss something.

i have a post about music that i'm working on. the trouble is, when it comes to my loves obsessions, there is so much all up in my head that i can't ever unload it in an organized manner. so that one will have to be revised, instead of just a blarrrrff -> headdump -> post. because i want it to mean something, since music means something to me.

lots of time musicking this weekend, anyway. it's one of those safe places i run to. maybe it's weird that i'm content to lay on my floor and stare at the ceiling with my headphones in and just... think... things. the trampoline is also a favorite place to muse/ic.

for as painful as the loneliness gets, i cherish my solitude. they're two heads of the same animal. or two animals with the same head, depending on how you look at it. two versions of the same picture.

(sorry, super quick sketch.) it's easier to convey that way, instead of trying to explain it.

i'm not sad. not in the generic sad-sad way that people would think. it's not a depression, it's a discouragement. a sustained longing to be understood by someone, someone on the same keel that i just can't seem to find anywhere. someone with a breadth and depth to them uncommon in the "someones" that i've met so far.

i don't want someone perfect, i never have. i like scars and rough edges, we've covered this. i just want someone i can talk to, someone who is creative, someone who sees and feels things keenly, with a good sense of humor and a good heart, someone loyal and compassionate, someone with character.

and i mean character in every possible connotation.

i don't need someone to be somebody, i just want them to be a somebody. sans games and gimmicks and garbage. sans all the bravado and pretense that seems to envelop everyone. like you have to expend so much effort to just chip that away and get at what's real that it's easy to just be... exasperated.

augh, these words are so small, so incompatible with the meanings i want to express.

i get tired, is all. of feeling like a half all the time. a crazy pendulum of an iron heart with no pole to magnetize it into a rhythm or purpose.

no anchor rock for this starfish heart.

an odd sort of welcome

there is a strange kind of vulnerability that comes when you realize that you know-know the people who are reading your little written ramblings. it's been a long while of not admitting that this blog exists, especially to people who i deal with on a daily (or semi-daily) basis.

a vulnerability, and an initial urge to run through with an eraser and tidy up. or to post more things that make me sound more important/better/whatever than i really am. however, a recent resolution to be more of myself, sans the influence of other people's opinions, has kept me from doing that. 

other than taking down all the naked pictures. just kidding, there weren't any naked pictures. 

maybe.

so, to my few new readers - or my new skimming-through-while-i'm-bored-ers - i would say welcome, however, this blog isn't really for you. and that's the thing, mainly, that i wanted to say here. mostly to myself. nothing's going to change because of a public admission. 

i think the only thing that will really change is that i will update this more frequently than only storming in here when i'm in a bad mood to rant something out instead of yelling at an actual person, or when i'm so terrified of being cornered by my own thoughts that i have to escape through fingertips instead of lying awake and miserable. 

and not all of this blog is angry and miserable. at least, i hope it's not viewed that way, despite most of the posts so far being products of the apex of some emotional upheaval.

honestly, for me, writing - in general, but mostly this sort of writing in particular - is meant for that. it's an exorcism of whatever thoughts i've got clattering around inside. i write because it's easier to sort through everything that's going on in this wild jumbly jungly head when i can throw it all out on the floor and then pick through it, than trying to organize it all while i'm holding it in my hand. i write because expressing brings more clarity to myself. 

i've been thinking a lot this week about taking on a new project. something more productive than my usual hobbies of gaming, or music, or jewelry-making, or soapcraft, or schlubbing through netflix trying to find something to watch. i want to write a book. have wanted to for years and years, and have started it so many times, but it's never the right one. the premise, or the diction, or the characters, or whatever tiny semblance of plot i've managed to wrestle out, just never...fit...right. and not having a book completed already doesn't mean that i haven't been trying for one, doesn't mean that i haven't always been writing one. lord knows i have more half-begun stories sitting in the little book folder in "my documents" than i've ever bothered to count.

it's just... do you ever feel like you've got something epic in there, somewhere, that you haven't quite figured out yet the right way to grab for it? that impending doom of destiny-shaking possibility which makes the littlest things significant and seemingly important ones so easy to ignore? 

ah, possibility. i am in love with you and terrified of you all the time. i feel that way about everything (since we're being honest) but especially about possibility. he's just so dapper and imposing, but when i get that one raised eyebrow and the sly side smile, well. 

forever fascinated by the endlessness of the particular.  

that's what this blog is about. possibility and the endlessness of particulars. mostly in how they relate to me. also, music.

for being a post telling people i'm not writing for them, this one sure said "you" a lot. oh well, i'll never admit that i know where i'm going in here.

anyway, song of the day: "inhibition" by dot hacker

dot hacker is an experimental rock band from california formed in 2008 by josh klinghoffer, before joining red hot chili peppers as guitarist in 2009. klinghoffer is the band's songwriter, lead singer, guitarist and also plays piano.

erryday

doing
the write thing.
just not sharing.

gotta do it now
or i won't get it
done today.
not much to say.

feeling kinda cold
and rude.
low, slow mood.
can't eat food.

tired of all
the relentless
devouring,
attitude scouring to
stave off
bitter souring.

you try too hard with
the rhyme,
sometimes.

gotta get all the grime
out in time
to get out something fine.

to leave something
beautiful, good

behind.

erasure

my feelings and emotions the past couple weeks have been an ant trapped in the amber of depression and anxiety. sometimes they just sit, and sink. sometimes there's a short burst of violent struggle to be free that only results in faster suction from below, fevered sinking. mental panic while the body goes numb.

it's not that cancer beat me, although someone was blunt enough to phrase it that way. that i'm letting it beat me. it's the anxiety about the future of my cancer or not-cancer that's beating me. give me a solid answer, doc. don't give a neurotic what-if's. that's like handcuffing an alcoholic to a seat at an open bar.

i'm sitting in a giant mesh of blood, and meat, numb nerve endings and overloaded synapse circuits. my brain has been burnt out, the fuses blown, the bare wires snapping when anything moves them. it feels like autopilot. or, like piloting a plane with all the instrument panels gone dark, the wheel snapped off in your hand, your air-traffic controller popping on every hour for a minute to tell you things are fine, you're doing great. hang in there and try not to hit anything. do you see any signs out the window? we'll find you when you crash, so you're not lost.

caffeine sets it off. the electric flash through the wires, sparks and then black nothing. those are the short violent struggles. family sets it off. mom worries about me, and since she can't fix cancer, she helps by trying to fix everything else in my life that's wrong. i got a $5k loan approval to get a car. i can pay it off in 18 months or so. and what will i do with my car when i get it? probably still sit at home, for all the big talking i do. there aren't any relationships in my vicinity worth having. i want to go see faces, but they're all far away. i want to fall in love, but i just work, and come home, and work, and come home, and work, and come home, freak out at my family, work, come home. i gave them 28 years and i feel like they were a waste.

tonight i just want to be deleted. i want select all, backspace, type it again. get it right. what can you do with 5 years? i may have more than that, i may have less. i don't know yet. i used to think 5 year goals were for pretentious assholes who were so boring they knew where they'd be because spontaneity was a disease they hadn't caught yet, would never catch. born with the antibodies for it. now i think 5 year goals are for selfish, optimistic morons who can't hang on to just the moment they have in their hands, they have to grope for more because their moment now isn't enough. can't enjoy your mouthful because you're already thinking about the next one.

and i'm sitting here at the end of all the moments that have happened up until now, and i don't even want the one i've got. those five-year-goalers can have my moment. they'd do something better with it than i have. the introspection of nothing is only more nothing. holes within holes. i focused on them so much they manifested. i grew a hole that could only be fixed with a hole. and someone else filled the hole with something holes can't happen in anymore. but holes are all i've been good at. they let the rocks through. or they held all the rocks in. i can't be sure.

someone said we write to get a second chance. if you're born to be a writer, all you want are do-overs. my need for erasure is only fulfilling my destiny. you can scrub ink with an eraser long enough, that the paper comes too. sure, the paper comes too, but the ink is gone.

and isn't that what mattered?

Paul Auster says:

Becoming a writer is not a “career decision” like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you’re not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.


RAY BRADBURY

mayday resolutions

may day is a good day to re-evaluate my resolutions. it's like, mayday! mayday! i'm not doing what i planned to! help! let's fix this.

1. stop putting up with takers.

2.a. be selfish about who i keep close.
2.b. find better people to keep close.

3. if i don't write, draw every day. if i don't draw, write. no exceptions. one is good. both is better.

4. get lost. go wandering. at least one adventure a week.

5. save enough money for a fucking car already. even if it's a piece of shit. as long as it runs. this is a necessity.

6. be selfish with my time. it's precious, and should be spent on precious things.

7. cut the bullshit. especially the bullshit i try and give to myself.

8. i don't have to forgive everyone for everything. it's ok to call an asshole an asshole. It's better to not even call them.

9. be me. the end. stop trying to please everyone with all the little facets, it's making me miserable. 

10. emotional integrity, and integrity in general. refocus to this. stop being afraid to face the feelings, and ignore what everyone else thinks is the right thing. do what i know is the right thing. 

11. i had cancer. my arm doesn't work great. it's ok to be sad and mad about this. even if people act like it's not.

12. work when I work, and play when I play.

13. read more. read more poetry.

14. write my fucking novel.

13. one random, anonymous act of service for someone else every day. earn some karma credits.

15. find someone who will be sweet to me.

16. keep letting love happen. even if it hurts.

17. white hot passionate is the only way to be.

18. let past crap stay in the past. learn to let go. focus on the instants at hand.

19. only listen to good music.

20. stop worrying my opinions will offend someone. stick up for what i believe in. stand for things.

blaahhhhhg

i've been taking it hard the last few weeks, freaking out more about the nodules in my lungs. all the forums say one nodule is usually benign. more than one and it's most likely metastatic.
i'm gonna end up with lung cancer too. and dr. randall just didn't want to tell me until i'd gotten through the arm stuff.
i just feel like i've kind of been babied with how much the doctor's telling me
first it was replacing my bone.
then it was oh, we replaced your bone and took out some muscle
then it was oh, we replaced your bone, took out some muscle and then put new muscle in.
like, they replaced a whole part of the muscles on the back of my shoulder, which is why i can't rotate my arm out more than an inch.
they had me do all these new rotation exercises at PT yesterday, and I couldn't do any of them, and I just started sobbing.

so i spent all last night googling and reading and trying to find out what other cases like mine there have been
and there's just nothing there that says it won't recur if it's spread to the lungs or the soft tissue, which it did.
i'm ready to bet my life that the nodules in my lungs are cancer too.
guess what the life expectancy is for someone with osteosarcoma that's metastasized to the lungs?
five years.
five fucking years.
and i've done fuck all with my life.
blaaaahhh.
sorry.
done unloading. just a bad week.

book of images: i

rain lashing
so hard
the dead dog
writhes angrily
in the street
where it fell.


wild waste of words
works a wound way
within whitenoise whispering
without want, wonder,
or worth.


drowned by
riptides of thought
while the baby
cries itself
into oblivion.

is it rational?

"Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do. You know, and what is it specifically about creative ventures that seems to make us really nervous about each other's mental health in a way that other careers kind of don't do, you know? Like my dad, for example, was a chemical engineer and I don't recall once in his 40 years of chemical engineering anybody asking him if he was afraid to be a chemical engineer, you know? It didn't -- that chemical engineering block John, how's it going? It just didn't come up like that, you know? But to be fair, chemical engineers as a group haven't really earned a reputation over the centuries for being alcoholic manic-depressives."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

i feel like i write differently, depending on whether i'm writing in my notebook or on the computer. i think sometimes when i write on the computer, the tone of my writing tends to be a little more sarcastic, a little more sharp. or some other way that i can't quite put my finger on.

i just know the sensation of the things that i've written digitally or in analog tends to be distinguishable. is this just me, or do other writers have this problem? i asked it on twitter the other day, and my friend Collin confirmed that he too feels that way. anyway, that interests me, and i have been thinking about it this week, as i try to work on a new goal that i've set for myself, to go back to writing right before i fall asleep every night, for at least an hour. with no distractions, not even music. (that's a huge thing.)

i used to do it all the time, from like 2004-2007, and then i just got busy, and i got a computer and well, the internet has killed lots of useful time for lots of people, so i don't really need to justify (because i can't.) but i like knowing that i'm not the only time-wasting writer in the world. (when writers say they have "writer's block," they really mean "the internet" anyway.)

i've been avoiding writing out anything prosey lately, because there have been a lot of emotions that i've been dealing with, personal, secretish type of emotions, which i am comfortable with divulging cryptically and enigmatically into poetry. and with prose, i can't hide. maybe some people can, but i'm not one of them.

so i end up being so straightforward, and blunt. and say things that perhaps you won't be disappointed in, but that i would.

it's easier to explore my emotions in poetry, anyway. or it's tidier. i think them out in my head and try and translate - or abridge - them down into an image or an idea that fits the feeling. like cramming a huge pillow into a tiny box and all anyone can see is the box, but only i know that the pillow is stuffed inside. that's a shitty simile. but it kind of fits. you see the box, and sometimes the pillow, if i've done a good enough job divulging, but mostly you just see the box, but when i read my poetry, i see the box AND the pillow at the same time. so i remember exactly what giant knotted emotional mess was crammed in my head when i wrote it, and you just have a pretty little package to look at. does that makes sense?

do i care if it makes sense? no, not really. i'm writing this for me. explaining things to myself. and there are a few of you who know that this blog is here, who read it on occasion, but mostly i am just keeping a journal here. a journal that gets left on the nightstand and strangers find it and peek through, but only for a few pages, because it was meant for me, not them, and you can tell it was meant for me, and you become uninterested and walk away. because you don't see your name, or you do see it, but you don't want to read it. because what i have to say isn't what you expected. or because it's exactly what you expected, but you don't want to be reminded.

hang on, i'll go find an old poem and tell you what i was thinking when/as i wrote it.

Uncomfortable Isn'ts

I pluck dead words
from the rafters
at night, 
(i'm trying to pull whatever words i can grab
out of my head tonight.)
 
meet each shrunken
arrival with a doubt
and a stutter.
(each small, misfit wrong word that comes,
i second-guess, and can't quite get out. second-guessing myself,
really, not feeling confident enough to write this evening.)

Could I lick
the palms of your sweet
successes?
(i just want a small taste of what it's like to accomplish something,
because it seems like everyone else around me is accomplishing good things
and i want to know what that feels like.)

The honey of your
today stings straight
cinnamon on my lips 
(it hurts to see how sweet the lives of the people i called my peers
have become, while mine feels anything but sweet. i want the things
that you have right now, to be mine right now too, but they're not.)

and my tongue
pretends I know
the taste of tomorrow. 
(so while i watch you have all those things that i wanted/want for myself, 
to deal with it, i just imagine that someday i will have all those things too,
and that's supposed to make it hurt less.)

I have been Widow:
shutter-eyed;
waiting 
(i've been left alone by what i loved the most,
now my eyes and expressions are masked and closed-off
from everything outside, just waiting for something to change.)

for no one
once dinner's gone
cold. 
(...even though i feel like what i want is something that's never 
going to show up. and i'm wasting the time that i have right now.)


see, i don't feel like it's too much of a leap between what i wrote and what i mean, but like i said, i know the pillow's in the box. maybe the reader doesn't. that's what's floating at the top of my mind as i write this, anyway. not a day for digging deeper. no more emotional prose. for the moment.

weekend notebook

kneaded

i roll your indifference
indifferently
between my thumb
and forefinger.

i'm watching
other things, my focus
elsewhere,
but my attention
holds and moves you,
back, forth
at the back of my mind.

like the distraction
of a kneaded eraser,
familiar, tangible,
when you can't draw
and can't think
of anything to draw,
but are trying to.

this is not to say
that your indifference
is comforting.
just distracting.

and i will hold it
while i try
to think of better
things for my hand
to do.



small stones

jared laughs,
makes fun of me,
sometimes

when i tell him things.
(or because i tell him things.)

you can build a friend
out of small confessions.

you can build walls
with small confessions,
you can build
regret, and bridges.

burn them all
with small confessions.

in the end, life
is small confessions.

pieces of self,

tiny stones.
tiny perfect, flammable
honest stones.



back page

i am writing this
on the back of a page
that has already
been written on.

and this is a new thing,
a start, not a
continuation of what
is on the other side.

(i never do this.)

i hate doing this.
i hate the haunt
of the backward
ghost-letters i can see
behind what i am
now writing.

like this page isn't
good enough because
part of it has been
used.

and i relate to that.
and i hate it.
and i never do this.

but today, just now, i did.



(untitled)

i can be the kind
of person who writes
on both sides of the page.

i can spend a day
with strangers
and survive.

i can give,
and not get
what i gave,
but i can get
an experience.

i can get
used to being used
to you, or
by you

or used to
letting it go.

letting you go.

i can unwind
and blow
away.



sinner

sinner, sinner,
chicken dinner.

in a few weeks,
it will be back to red.
no more blonde
for me.

it doesn't fit,
makes me angry.

it was this hair
that you grabbed,
and i need it
different.

and you, you stopped
talking to me
because i said no
too many times,

or because i said
too many things.

or because you're just
busy, but i am
better at coping
when i can blame myself.

i'm a woman,
i bit the apple
and blamed me
ever since.

and you,
you pulled down
pictures
and then your pants,

and it's a woman
who picks up
the pieces.

a daughter,
a wife,
a mother,
a sister.

i am eve.
i am even.
i am evening
the score,
since you need
settling.

shhh.
here, eat this.

i've had one bite,
and now i'll be
feeding you
forever.

i will meditate
on this,
translate it,
expand my suffering.

an nth degree
for my first degree
felony.

amplification
of suffering is
a son,
i will digest
this bite. he will
eat it vicariously,

sucked from my
very heart
and middle.

swallow my sin,
you'll grow.
experience is
a nutrition.

regret,
a necessity.

the shame
of no shame.

regret that
the bite of sin
is tied to my name,
every time.

and the son,
and you,
and you,
and you,
point and forget,
even while stuck
in a web.

for my name
is tied

to everything.



forced

necessity compels
the page be still
and submit
to the stab, slap
and scrawl
of this pen.

a black prick
of ink
erasing white
virginity as it
draws its desire
into being.

to begin
a picture, or
a poem,
is the most
violent thing.

it is a destruction,
a construction
with the inability
to rebuild.

and it can never
be unbegun;
it can never
be anything but
something

brutally past
the beginning.

whiteout

i'll write out the cracks in my current sky
sitting outside with a giant sharpie,
trying to dot out pinhole stars
like it will ever be accomplished,
like i will magically stop
waking up crying over dreams i
can't remember.

4 am is far more sinister than 3,
because at 3 the potential for more
sleep can still tantalize you.
but 4 am is a famine and leaves you
desperate for more than two hours,
which is all you could get.

every old flame burns my unborn
baby into these charcoal sockets,
so if i wake up dry, i can find
something quick to cry about anyway.

brown curls. brown eyes everywhere.
i see him in you, and you, and you.
it's enough to claw the sight out of days
and take solace in a warm sclera
blood gush from somewhere besides
the empty middle whole of me.

i want to curl my fingers up in
that one's hair and pull his face close,
feel a stubblescratch on my cheek, nose,
the accidental bumps of teeth
the salt of his mouth making
my mouth water, making indiscriminate
soft noises of pleasure and forgotten
loneliness, if even just for a few moments
before the pullaway.

i want closer, i want the cling.
not this leftbehind back of the fridge
leftover monday morning feeling;
a perpetual alarm blare at the base
of the skull like dull tingling and
every little sidetrack distraction
a snooze button five minutes too short.

a quick wit nick of the finger
enough to pull red from the recesses,
and remind me how easy it is
to love every little thing so entirely,
and then smother it with neuroses
and all the wrong answers and
regret and hope and longing
and rejection and obsession.

i get addicted to whole red holes.
the deep color draw of you so
damn disarming, and i need you
to need me to fix something,
so i can feel like you need me
for everything.

to make the brown hair
and brown eyes more solid
and less sad, less of a cryover
on a 4am sleepless mourning.

ray bradbury

"some people turn sad awfully young. no special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. they bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as i say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. i know, for i'm one of them."

drawn

draw you in dark lines
in the dark,
my pen unraveling
the thready knots
of then and now.

you sit on the other side
of the paper.
laugh as i trace
the contour of all
your outside edges,
snare my distraction
in light lines of
conversation, important

to keep my focus
from reaching max
capacity. from becoming
too intent, or intense
for you to cling to,
for you to know how
to handle.

either way, if you
reached now it
would be too late.

the space is refilled
no longer reserved,
and i, i have turned
thought and pen toward
other things.

the after afternoon

so much on my mind today, and no words of my own for it. not yet. but there is music for it. thank god, there is always music.


1.
said i came close as anyone's come
to live underwater for more than a month
said it was night inside my heart, it was
you said it should tear a kid apart, it does.
i had a hole in the middle
where the lightning went through
i told my friends not to worry.
i had a hole in the middle
so much sideshow to do
i told my friends not to worry.
didn't want to be your ghost
didn't want to be anyone's ghost.


2.
well i bit on my lip and i kicked at my toes
no, i don't need your lecture because your lecture won't show
that you told me so i told you so
but i would have managed, i would have been fine
i'd do it myself and i'd just do it my way,
i'm a big man for thinking just so.
in all the reasons to come, well they override my body and,
i point to the sun, 'cause where it's warm
is where the wilderness grows
and it grows and it grows till it all becomes nothing
and nothing is left as you know

3.
that secret that you know
but don't know how to tell
it fucks with your honor
and it teases your head
but you know that it's good girl
'cause it's running you with red
and i said i know it well

4.
took a friend i found
crossed some blood red river
never did find my way home
in time to forgive her.
why must people always fall for what they can't have?
why must people always grab what they'd never grasp?
how did we get so far?
took a raft i found
crossed some blood red river.
never did find my way home
in time for my dinner
why must people always fall for what they never have?
why is it a crime to miss a part of you that's dead?
i lost a friend i found
down in some blood red river.
never did find my way home
in time to forget her.
why must people always want what they can't have?
why must people always take, but forget to ask?
was it only a dream away?

5.
lying under a broken bridge
a heart, a mouth with nothing to give.
you came, you say, you draw
out the evening. out the evening.
thieves steal the mood you're in
you were just out wandering.
the last soul of glass from your past is back.
bury this.
your blood thins at this war within.
by the soft night, while the lights were dim
you lost the long goodbye.
but you tried, but did you try?
bury this.

6.
sleep well tonight
tomorrow we'll fight
sleep while you can
rest while you still can
sleep well tonight
i don't think i can
i'm slumbering to music
my limbs cease to hurt
it was such a night
comforting to me
got carried away
dear john
dear john
dear john

7.
well i'd like to think i'm the mess you'd wear with pride
like some empty dress on the bed you've laid out for tonight
maybe i'll tell you sometime.
time, sometime. and you were right
right
you were right
outside
by the doorstep
in a worn-out suit and tie
i'll wait for you to come down
where you found me
where we'll shine.
outside.

8.
in a dark room we fight
make up for our love
i've been thinking, thinking about you, 'bout us.
am i moving slow? our hearts beat so fast
i've been dreaming, dreaming about you, 'bout us.
my head is a jungle, jungle.
i was speaking soft, i see the pain in your eyes
i've been feeling, feeling for you my love
my head is a jungle, jungle.
my love is wasted, sorry for this i never meant to be
hurting ourselves, hurting ourselves
and i'm complicated, you won't get me out of trouble
understanding myself, understanding myself.
my head is a jungle, jungle.

9.
i took my love, i took it down.
climbed a mountain and i turned around.
and i saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
till the landslide brought it down.
i've been afraid of changing
'cause i've built my life around you.
but time makes you bolder,
children get older,
i'm getting older too.
oh, take my love, take it down.
climb a mountain and turn around.
and if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills,
well, the landslide will bring it down.

10.
i wanna ask you all that you have felt
you just say you prefer the night.
i am listening to the radio,
driving circles in my car.
they keep playing songs that i don't know
and i keep wondering where you are.
and now i'm feeling sad,
and my eyes bleed the weather, like snow.
and now i'm wondering, could i have loved you better?
i don't know.

11.
oh my god, we are done
so come take my daughter,
and come take my son.
see, we never followed.
i've been through your garden,
and i've been to your grave.
i wonder if my heart will be hungry.
i wonder when my body does decay
i somehow imagined i'd walk this earth
no forever, forever.

12.
sorrow found me when i was young
sorrow waited, sorrow won.
sorrow they put me on the pill.
it's in my honey, it's in my milk.
don't leave my half-burnt heart alone on the water,
cover me in rag and bone sympathy
'cos i don't wanna get over you.
i don't wanna get over you.

13.
you gave me more
and how you adored.
there's so much you say that i'm right.
'cos you're still giving in,
and i'll only say
that i'd keep you for short.
i'm out of time,
or can't disregard
how you've healed these wounds and these scars.
but if i could see straight from this chair:
an empty room and uneven stairs,
and when i retire for my solitude
i know you'd loved me
as i have loved you.

14.
i don't know what i've done
or if i like what i've begun.
but something told me to run
and honey, you know me, it's all or none.
there were sounds in my head,
a little voice was whispering
that i should go, and this should end,
and i found myself listening.
see, i thought love was black and white
that it was wrong or it was right,
but you ain't leaving without a fight
and i think i am just as torn inside.
and i won't be far from where you are,
if ever you should call.
you meant more to me than anyone i ever loved at all,
but you taught me how to trust myself,
and so i say to you, this is what i have to do.
'cos i don't know who i am without you,
all i know is that i should.
and i don't know if i could stand another hand upon you,
all i know is that i should,
'cos she will love you more than i could,
she who dares to stand where i stood.

15.
you're right in the park and you're peeking,
piss pools in your seat.
she's standing inside but you surely repeat
oh god, don't leave me here.
i will freeze till the end.
love is love's reprieve.
winter is come and you're stuck here
oh and so is she
now when the wind blows you cover your teeth,
i told you to shed away and trade in your blues.
love is love's sad news.
that was wisconsin, that was yesterday
now i have nothing that i can keep
'cause every place i go i take another place with me
love is love's mystique.
you're up on the bar and you're shaking
with every grimy word.
who will love
what's love when you're hurt?
you wonder as you see the snow kiss the curb.
love is love's return.
that was wisconsin, that was yesterday.
now i have nothing that i can keep.
'cause every place i go i take another place with me.
love is love's critique.

Mixtape #4

1. Anyone's Ghost by The National

2. Big Man by Boy & Bear

3. Blood Bank by Bon Iver

4. Blood Red River by Beth Orton

5. Bury This by Amy Millan

6. Dear John by Loney, Dear

7. I Go to the Barn Because I Like the by Band of Horses

8. Jungle by Emma Louise

9. Landslide (Fleetwood Mac cover) by Lior

10. Like Snow by Tinpan Orange

11. Lordy May by Boy & Bear

12. Sorrow by The National

13. Uneven Stairs by Leah Flanagan

14. Where I Stood by Missy Higgins

15. Wisconsin by Bon Iver

gingerly

today i feel like tracing a slow fingertip around the outlines of my life. to remember where i'm at, to take inventory. i keep touching this new scar on my arm. watching it turn white when i slide my finger over it, and then back to red again. there are a few places where it's jagged, bumpy... the edges didn't meet up in quite the same place. it's harder underneath it in some places and not others. parenthesized by new white stretch marks, from being pulled open so long, and then pulled closed and then trying to hold together while my arm was swollen and healing.

i thought i would be so...self-conscious of this scar, but i'm not. not yet, anyway. it's a badge of courage to me, right now. a mark of character. distinct proof that i could do a hard thing, and make it out to the other side. it's a reminder to me, how quickly things change. it's a long line of patience and work and drawn out nights and tears. it's a tangible proof of change and instant. it's a thread in the tapestry, as it were.

i started typing, not intending to write about my scar. or my surgery or my cancer or any of that. but it seems like every line of thought circles back to it right now, because it's been my main focus for the last two months. it has been.

i am finding new things to focus on, now that i'm on the other side. or i am finding that i am ready to admit that there are other things i'm focused on. it's a quick and difficult lesson to learn, surprisingly. life is short. you hear it, you know it, but you don't know it until you find yourself in that moment where you're straight lucid and realize you're in idiot for ever thinking about ending it early yourself, because now that it's not in your control anymore, you want it. and you want it more than anything else you can think about.

and by some crazy miracle you get to keep it. and you get back out into your life and everything feels new and possible again. and why worry about what anyone thinks anymore? do what you have to to make yourself happy.

life is short.

say all those things you keep locked on the back of your tongue. let them roll forward, fall off. get up and do the things you've only been letting yourself imagine doing.

i can feel it deep in my new bone. just watch. i'm gonna go kerouac on everyone's ass.

drafted

ancient invitation hum

the curse of ad infinitum

spindle-web of woe is wrought

without the shrouded mist of thought

all your echoes come before

words pass lips, you pass your door

it ripples through the parallels

of other sights, sounds, touches, smells

  

words wind tighter, wind unwinding...

a march of letters--rhyme too binding

devour

impetus.

through the
looking glass.

tawdry,
elusive reflection
of what
he'd always
shown himself.

or targeted
obsession
based on
mere untamed
possibility.

his hunger.

notebook 2.27.12

i loved you more than these poor bones could ever take
some holes
are cleaned up
the emptiness
scraped out of them
until they can
be refilled
with something more
unholey.

some holes
are so holey
they have no
edges. nothing
left to scrape against,
when you try
to scrape out
the emptiness.

some holey holes
with no edges
to define the hole
from the unholey
have to be removed,
so there's nothing
to have a hole in.
and something
impossible
to grow holes in
is put in the place
of the hole's
hole.

so it's like
a double hole,
the holey of holeys.

covered up
so no one can see it,
except the person
who knows it's
there.

the person who
has to miss
two things, now,
instead of just
one.

windstorm - school of seven bells

it's what i listened to the most today. good song. catchy, in a feels-mellow-but-it's-not kind of way. anyway, i like it. you might too.

kenneth

i keep wanting to write to you, of you this week. make it specific and blatant, because i have looked for you and can't find you anymore, anywhere. just shadows, helpless traces in all the old places.

so here i am, reaching at the dark, because i felt ready to say this, or feel the need to say it. to say something... i don't know what i'm saying, just that in my very gut is some urge to find you.

you don't answer any of the old email addresses anymore. i've messaged them a few times. i'm sorry for being so angry, for not responding those couple times when you reached out last year.

i wish i could know you are well.

i wish you could know that i miss you. i miss the sound of your voice and the way we used to laugh.

so much has changed. i'm sitting here with one good arm, another dead one slung up against my side, and a giant scar from my neck to my elbow. i had cancer, kenneth. fucking cancer. i might still have it. i have to hang around and get checked up for another two years, hope the nodules they found in my lungs are just random growths that i've always had, instead of metastases.

but you know what? this is it. this is why i feel like i have to talk to you again, to find you and be friends.

i came out of a ten hour surgery, a surgery i went into scared completely shitless and wondering if i'd even wake up, or if i woke up would i only have one arm there? what if... what if...

and the first thing i said when i woke up, according to the nurse at my bedside, was your name. YOUR name.

the nurse was so confused. she kept saying, kip? kip? thinking i wanted to see my dad, but i was insistent. kenneth? who is he? he's not here. kenneth. kenneth. i didn't stop saying it until i realized i was saying it. of course you weren't there. and i knew i was awake, like i wrote in that poem.

i keep dreaming about you. old dreams, new dreams. max dreams. i fought it for a couple weeks, thinking it was the drugs making me overly emotional, or, i don't know what.

i miss you, is what. i've got this huge hole of waiting for my arm to heal, to try and use it again, and the only hole i've ever experienced like it, the only thing i can relate it to in all of this, is the hole of you. the hole of you that's so big, so bottomless, so.. fathomless. oh, the irony. the odds of fate.

i just want to know that you don't hate me, or that you think of me. i track visits to my blog sometimes. sometimes perth pops up in them, once every four or five months. such a tiny blip on a big radar, and i wonder if it's you. i hope it's you. and i wonder what you see, what you come back looking for.

if you ever see this, i want you to please not send back my things. i gave them to you, they're yours now. i want you to keep them. unless you've burned them or thrown them out... i don't know. perhaps you weren't as rash at the end as i was. maybe you left them at your parents' house.

i filled that black november with nothing but regrets. lost so many pieces of you. i still have the ring, i still have bear, and the birthday card. but i'm missing so many of the photos. the conversations.

i do love you. you matter to me. you always will. that doesn't change, can't change. as much as i have tried to make it, to ignore it, it's like trying to cut off a limb. you were a part of me for so long.

email me, if you ever see this. if you read this and feel like you could just assuage the small part of me that aches to know you're ok. email me, for whatever reason keeps pulling you back here. all my little corners of contact have stayed the same. even my phone number.

i just need to know that you're ok. that life is treating you well. that you're happy and healthy and that you know that i'm thinking of you. a lot. i do every day. i don't know if that means anything to you, but you should know it just the same.

just a hello, just an... anything.

love,
chels